Brunch til 5 pm

This weekend was our most recent BRG's "meeting"- Libby, Alvina, me and Grace (clockwise from upper left in pic) along with some other assorted artist friends got together for a "book brunch": that is we ate crepes and fritata and sat around in my living room sipping mimosas, chatting about Little Women, potential plots for novels, and travelling to Hong Kong for school visits (lucky Grace)... but don't be fooled- this ain't no stuffy literary discussion! One of the best things about getting together with my ladies is that we can lie around chatting about almost anything from censorship in teen novels...





...to the problem with having children (sometimes they pass out from eating too many cupcakes), to when Grace's husband was in high school and made his roommate eat a cigarette! Ew! Anything is fair game, though the conversaton always comes back to books somehow...




This meeting was not our most bookish, as we did allow our boyfriends/huspands etc to come along. Next time, we decided, we will send them off hunting squirrels or something so they don't distract us. Ahem.

Why Blue Rose Girls?

The Original Rose Girls

In the early 20th century, three women illustrators: Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley lived and flourished together in a shared space above the Red Rose Inn. As their careers blossomed, they were called “The Red Rose Girls”. At a time where society and the illustration profession was male dominated, the Red Rose Girls painted their own path and succeeded—an example which we dare to follow.

In 1996 three women illustrators: Grace Lin, Anna Alter and Linda Wingerter forged a bond via the internet. Relying on eachother, the seeds of their children's book careers began to take root; and they named themselves "The Blue Rose Girls," as an homage to the friendship of Red Rose Girls before them. As their work bloomed, they sent out runners and authors Libby Koponen, Meghan McCarthy, editor Alvina Ling, and former librarian/poet Elaine Magliaro soon found themselves planted.

While we don’t all live together in a shared studio space, we do, like the Red Rose Girls, depend and feed off each other for inspiration and support. Welcome to the Blue Rose Garden, we hope it is as captivating for you as it is for us.

"But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”-Oliver Wendell Holmes